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Save XP? NOT!

Rampant shark jumping on the road to irrelevance.

For the past several months, InfoWorld, that formerly important IT tome, has been beating the Save (Windows) XP drum in an utterly transparent attempt to remain relevant in the collective minds of IT administrators.

In the process, over 210,000 losers supposedly added their names to a forlorn petition to extend the life of XP. Yep, 210,000 yum-yums all dressed up, and nothing to do with their time!

Yesterday, I got some spam from the head monkey at that zoo, Eric Knorr, telling the world of his escapades into the land of fancy.

Really though, did he think he and his online rag mattered? To Microsoft? Or even to us?

Listen Eric, I hate to break it to you publicly like this: you do not matter. You are totally irrelevant to the IT world of today.

Take your crayons and go away.

Save XP my a$$!

Posted: Jul 01 2008, 03:51 PM by John Obeto | with 6 comment(s)

Comments

anonymous said:

Yeah.  We know the customers don't matter to MS.  Vista is proof enough of that.

To be honest, I never actually expected MS to save XP.  I had hoped that they would have an OS worthy of replacing it ready to go before they pulled the trigger, but I guess they just weren't up to the task.  

Given the current situation though, I have a question for you:   How relevant do you think Vista is to the IT world of today?  Of a year from now?

If these sources are correct, Vista has been banned by:

Intel

bits.blogs.nytimes.com/.../index.html

The US Dept. of Transportation

www.theinquirer.net/.../vista-ie7-office-2007-banned-by-us-department-of-transportation

The US National Institute of Standards

tech.blorge.com/.../mega-blow-to-microsoft-as-us-government-departments-ban-vista

The US Federal Aviation Administration

tech.blorge.com/.../mega-blow-to-microsoft-as-us-government-departments-ban-vista

Texas Instruments

www.aaxnet.com/.../edit043.html

And I hear that the military can't transition from Windows to Linux fast enough.  

And to the matter of how every many millions of Vista licenses are claimed to have been sold, I ask you:

How many people are actually using those licenses?  How many promptly upgraded the machines to XP or Linux immediately upon purchase?

How many even had a choice in the matter of buying Vista or not?  

To see some real anti-competitive behavior, just try going into any retail store in America and getting a machine without Vista preloaded.  It is pretty much shoved down people's throats.  Trying to get a refund for a Vista license that won't be used results in an endless runaround between the store and Microsoft that only ends when the interested party either gives up of takes things to small claims court, despite the Vista license promise of a refund if the terms are not agreed to.  

Now, I'll admit that the crowd that uses their cd trays for cup holders may well be using Vista until Windows ME Mark 3 rolls around because they don't know any better, but so far I have yet to see anyone with any computer knowledge and/or a need for high performance computing booting Vista at all.  It's all Macs and Linux boxes.  I think the only machines I've ever seen running Vista are the display models in stores, and I've seen several of them crash while someone was trying them out.  

# July 4, 2008 9:02 PM

anonymous said:

And by the way, if you should happen to deem my comment unfit for publishing, I'll understand.  The truth hurts, no?

# July 4, 2008 9:06 PM

John Obeto said:

@Anonymous: When you hide under the cover of anonymity, you can regurgitate crap without having any auditing.

However, I am here to help you.

  1. An OS worthy of replacing XP? Are you kidding' me? Seriously, are you? Windows XP is deemed by you to be the best thing going today? Seriously?
  2. If customers didn't matter to Microsoft, Windows Vista(tm) would never have been developed.
  3. Apart from the NYTimes article on Intel, all of the articles linked to in your comment were over a year old. You would do very well to update your reading material.
  4. Intel is a special case. If there really is a benefit to Intel's intransigence in moving to Windows Vista, then the fault is Intel's IT department's. How can Intel ask you to purchase systems based on their microprocessors if they cannot test against it over 20 months after the OS was released?
  5. "The military cannot transform to Linux fast enough"? Don't take anecdotal information as fact, youngun! Nowhere is anyone planning a mass move to Linux. Even Linuxheads concede that it isn't ready for Prime Time.

To read you, millions of people are purchasing Windows Vista licenses only to downgrade them to XP. Where? On Planet Melmar? Dude, come on!

Apart from the clowns at InfoWorld, who else banged the drum? It is telling, isn't it, that only 210K or so morons fell for that stupid publicity gimmick on that failing site. If you look at their readership numbers, wasn't that an abject failure? 210K? That was it?

Staying on the Linux thing, Michael Pietroforte on 4SysOps.com (definitely bookmark this site!) has a revealing article on the rush to install Linux on systems by some cities in Europe. You know, the ones that made those attention-grabbing headlines years ago when it was fashionable to declare your affection for that freetard-friendly OS.

Money quote: Munich was a bit more ambitious, but they also have only managed to roll out 1,000 Linux machines so far (out of 30,000). Considering that they made this decision five years ago, this is kind of disappointing in my view. If you only count the working days, then this corresponds to about 1 Linux installation per day. If they continue at this pace, they will finish the project in 65 years.

One Linux instal a day? Too funny! 

That Linux movement? It isn't happening. It is as virtual as the 'internet pipes'.

"It's all Macs and Linux"? Maybe on Melmar, or Ork, or some other otherworldly place. However, on Earth (Terra, Sol-3), humans use Windows. In one form or another.

Come into the light, man. Come into the light!

# July 5, 2008 4:35 AM

anonymous2 said:

Ok, I don't intend to continue this for much longer, but you do deserve a reference on a couple of my points.

Specifically, the military one:

Navy:  powdermonkey.blogs.com/.../wow-navy-to-foc.html

Army: www.theregister.co.uk/.../us_army_linux_integration

And before you jump on the army one, remember that any difficulties in making the transition have to do with getting past Microsoft's built-in incompatibility with anything that doesn't come from planet Redmond.  I will use Terra,Sol-3 logic on this one:  If one vendor keeps its proprietary stuff secret from the rest of the world, and another vendor makes all of its code and protocols freely (in terms of liberty and cost) available, then on whose side does the burden and responsibility of interoperability fall, especially if there were a situation where preventable interoperability hiccups could result in lives lost and/or major lawsuits?

Also, I do not think that XP is the best thing going today, though it passes well enough for a video game console I suppose.  I think that the best things going today are OSX and Linux/BSD, depending on ones needs and priorities, but that is my opinion from my own experience as a developer and system administrator.

As for the articles on Vista, I looked for more recent ones, but found none stating that the entities in question had changed their views, and I would think that some people would be very quick to trumpet the news of such entities reversing such a decision.  Again, correct me if I am wrong if you happen to know of facts to reference that contradict this.

Regardless of what did or did not go on in Vienna, several organizations and countries the world over are using Linux for prime time, including:

Brazil : www.tmcnet.com/.../1662778.htm

India : www.linux-watch.com/.../NS6504473525.html

Switzerland : ec.europa.eu/.../469

South Africa : www.ioltechnology.co.za/article_page.php

France : news.cnet.com/.../2100-7344_3-6138372.html

I'm sure there are others, but there I see no need to scour the web for more.  Again, these may not be the latest or greatest links, but two-year-old news that hasn't changed is still valid.

Now, to the petition:  I'm guessing that there were probably many people, like me, that either saw no sense in signing a petition that was doomed from the start, or haven't used Microsoft software in years and probably wouldn't notice if the whole company closed up shop tomorrow.

---

But all of the above was written before I dug just a bit more and realized just how tied to Vista you and your company seem to be, since the company has been a "Microsoft shop since the inception of the company."  In that case, I can see where your opinions are coming from, and I understand that it is probably in your best interest for Vista to do well and for people to have prejudice against any alternatives.  My apologies about the second post, as well.  Watching the OOXML saga play out racheted my cynicism toward Microsoft up a few notches.  Perhaps that is also where I picked up a bad tendency to "regurgitate crap without any auditing" occasionally. ;>  But anyway, I wish you and your company well.  You obviously feel that Vista is the best solution out there, and with any luck it will continue to serve your needs.  But just understand that there are plenty of non-Microsoft-shops out there, my own business being one of them, that have evaluated the Microsoft solutions and deemed them inadequate.  For example, many of the day-to-day functionality and security that I use to carry out work either does not exist within Microsoft's products, exists in a severely crippled form compared to its open source counterparts, or works in XP but is still not yet compatible with Vista.

If my frustration bubbles out from time to time, it is only because I would like to see the marketplace set level and fair.  I would like the freedom to choose the operating system on my machines without being forced to pay for a license of a Microsoft operating system due to an anticompetitive contract with the OEMs, especially since that license will never see the light of day on my machines.  In my own opinion, forced bundling of one and only one operating system (Vista) with a PC in a market where there are several good operating systems to choose from (Vista, Suse, Redhat/Fedora,Ubuntu, Mandriva) is as rediculous as forced bundling of a printer with a PC when there are several good printer manufacturers to choose from.  Akin to "any color car you want, so long as it is black" in this day and age.  As a matter of fact, such practices are illegal in France, I understand.  I wish they would be made illegal in my own country as well.

# July 7, 2008 12:36 PM

anonymous2 said:

Sorry, I suppose I would be remiss if I did not cite a reference for the French law at the end as well:

www.theinquirer.net/.../french-court-nobbles-asus

# July 7, 2008 12:39 PM

John Obeto said:

@Anonymous: Your statements about the incompatibility of Microsoft's products re other products make no sense in the real world.

Since Microsoft is the de facto standard, others, like Avis, have to try harder. At resolving compat issues, etc. Not the other way around.

The best things going in OSs today are Linux and OS X? Be for real!

There have been more patches, bugfixes, and whatnots for OS X over the past 12 months than for Windows Vista and Windows XP combined over the last three years. Check on that.

Countries that cannot compete set up artificial barriers for those who can do so. If you do not remember, look into the annals of business magazines from the 1970s and revisit this.

What you see in Brazil is a brash replay of the car importation quota tarrifs ban of a couple of decades ago with a few new twists.

As to being a Microsoft shop, I have no regrets.

I am proud of the work I have done over the past nearly two decades, and the productive, cost-efficient solutions we have delivered, and are continuing to deliver to our clients.

As long as Microsoft continues to innovate, and develop products that allow us to further this mission, we will continue to do so.

I have been accused of being the 'Microsoft Fan'.

I am, I admit it gleefully.

# August 10, 2008 12:56 PM